RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

This 60 Minutes “The Cleantech Crash” segment is hysterical.

That’s hysterical-funny, not hysterical-froth-flecked-panic. For froth-flecked-panic, Watts Up With That? has cheerfully reproduced the Center for American Progress’s remarkably semantic-free response. I recommend reading it after you watch the video: to quote CS Lewis, you will not find a dull page in it.

Executive summary of the video: We gave billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to Silicon Valley venture capitalists so that they could develop trendy ‘green’ technologies: the ROI on that was awful, the venture capitalists largely cashed out, and various elements of Chinese state-sponsored ‘businesses’ have now swooped in to buy up the companies* (and the research data that those companies managed to produce). So you can see why CAP is freaking out and demanding a Public Editor for 60 Minutes; people get very cranky when you call their religious dogma into question.

*As to the PRC getting their hands on our research data… well. I suspect that it will work out for them just as well as buying up American real estate worked out for the Japanese in the 1980s. Better battery and solar power technology will not address the PRC’s major block to true economic progress and prosperity (said block being, of course, the PRC) and you can’t power either a tank or an ICBM with a battery. Mind you, the real problem there – and one that 60 Minutes didn’t address – is that Chinese investment in American companies eventually means Chinese investment in American political parties (in this case, the Democrats). And that is something that we need to take seriously.